It was an inauspicious debut.
When Mississauga’s Smita Chandra gave her first cooking lesson for the LCBO at the Manulife Centre in Toronto many years ago, she was asked at the end of the demonstration what beverage she would recommend to go with the cuisine.
While the audience might not have been surprised to hear Gewurtztraminer or Pinot Grigio as a response, it’s safe to say that the answer she provided — “Coke” — wasn’t in the product consultant’s handbook.
“I don’t like wine and I love Coke. I have Coke for breakfast,” laughs the irrepressible Chandra during an interview in the Meadowvale home where she and her husband have lived since they came to Canada from Ithaca, N.Y. 18 years ago.
When the Chandras arrived in the United States from their native India five years before they moved to Canada, Smita had no work permit and her husband, Sanjeev was a student. Smita had degrees from India in journalism and psychology.
Sanjeev was getting his PhD in mechanical engineering. He’s now a professor of mechanical engineering at the St. George campus of the University of Toronto.
“I had no work permit so I thought, ‘What the heck, I’ll write a cookbook,” says Smita. From Bengal to Punjab — the Cuisines of India (1989) was really a record of her family’s culinary heritage. Gathered from old recipes on scraps of paper and hand-me-down letters, cobbling together the book became a very emotional thing for Smita. “Someone should be in charge of family recipes. Otherwise, they die.”
Many Indians are vegetarians and, since the flavour in many dishes comes from the spice mixture and not the fat, most are more healthy than much north American fare.
Smita knows because she put the family recipes to the Sanjeev test. “He tried all the recipes in the book and didn’t gain an ounce.”
Chandra was put to a stiffer challenge earlier this year when the Ontario Potato Marketing Board asked her to develop some Diwali recipes using potatoes.
“When you look at southern Ontario and you see the large part of the community that is south Asian,” says Farah Tayabali of Mississauga’s Healthcomm Inc. which does public relations for the Potato Board, “you see why we asked Smita to show new ways to use the humble potato. Smita was chosen because of her knowledge of Indian cooking and her creativity.”
Chandra came up with several new recipes including a Chinese-Indian fusion dish called Hakka Chili Potatoes, Tandoori Potato and Paneer skewers and, most surprisingly, a new take on the sweet Diwali delicacy gulab jamuns. “They’re addictive and irresistible,” testifies Smita of the sweet and spongy dish.
First she made a call home to her ultimate cooking authority — her mother — and then she started experimenting on her foolproof GE Profile stove.
By subsitituting potatoes for the traditional cottage-cheese style thickening agent called khoya, Chandra developed gulab jamuns that are lighter and easier to make, holding their shape better without sacrificing a bit of flavour.
“They’re absolutely foolproof,” says Chandra. “My 14-year-old son could make them. Heck, my cat could make them.”
Unfortunately, judging by the size of Kit-Kat, he has been eating the traditional gulab jamuns.
Chandra is a contributor to the food section of The Toronto Star, to Desi Life magazine and makes the rounds of cooking shows on radio and TV, having appeared on Christine Cushing’s Cook With Me, Anna Olson’s Kitchen Equipped and Dr.. Marla Shapiro’s Balance.
She also has a classic “my big break-that-never-quite-happened story.” When her third cookbook, Cuisines of India — The Art and Tradition of Regional Indian Cooking (co-authored with Sanjeev who has developed a keen interest in food history) was published in 2001, no less a personage than Martha Stewart expressed interest.
A video of Smita giving a cooking lesson was sent to Martha and she was quickly scheduled to appear on the show. Unfortunately, as they say, events intervened. After the attack on the World Trade Centre, the appearance was cancelled.
Chandra is doing famously, nonethless. She quit her full-time job in the food industry last summer and is so busy with cooking school lessons and recipe development that the idea of writing another cookbook will have to wait.
She’s pitched the idea of The Smita Chandra Show to The Food Network but, surprisingly, given the obvious interest in south Asian cuisine in these parts and across Canada, the gauntlet has not been taken up.
That’s too bad because, as Farah Tayabali says, “Smita develops authentic recipes that would pass muster with anyone’s Indian grandmother but are also quite accessible.”
And then there’s the natural sponsor: Coke.
Here’s her website: www.smitachandra.com.